About Me

Play time typically evokes an image of happy and carefree kids, going about in a play area, basking in the innocent pleasures of childhood, and filling stressed-out adults with nostalgia. While playing is indeed an enjoyable activity, the benefits of play extend as play therapy for children who have been under fire.

A slew of statistics this and last year shows how different instances of hardship permeate the idealized untroubled world of children — an annual average of 1.5 million children having to endure the divorce in their family, 54% or more than half of children living with remarried parents, single parents, or no parent at all, one in four children living in poverty and distressed by instability at home (or homes because of constant moving). Aside from facing changes at home, children can also face problems like rejection and bullying in school, crimes and abuse, and a lot more.

These can strike anytime during their critical formative years and can have negative long-term implications to young minds that have yet to fully take hold of reality. While it is impossible to shield children from every hard fact of life, parents, along with child advocates in the community, can help children cope.

One of the things that concerned adults can use is play therapy for children, which comes in many forms including active play in playgrounds. Play therapy activities serve as a tool for kids so they can bounce back better as they build resilience growing up in the real world.

Through play therapy, children learn new skills that they can apply to cope with any challenge.
Photo courtesy of dadblunders via Flickr, Creative Commons

According to the American Psychology Association (APA), “Building resilience — the ability to adapt well to adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats or even significant sources of stress — can help our children manage stress and feelings of anxiety and uncertainty. This makes instilling resilience in your children a better option than potentially overprotecting and not letting kids experience life at all.”

Kids today are playing less compared to their parents when they were still children. According to a research report, 70 percent of mothers said they played outside every day when they were girls, while only 31 percent said their children did the same. 56 percent said they played outside for three or more hours, while only 22 percent said this about their children. How then do multi-sensory playgrounds fit in the picture?

Parents are aware of the importance of outside play time on the well-being of their children but due to work and other distractions, they are not able to give their kids the amount of play time that they need. Because of this, there are children who develop sensory disabilities, such as sensory processing disorder and autism spectrum disorder.

These are alarming facts that parents should do something about immediately. Giving your child more time to play is not enough. You should also strive to provide your kid a stimulating multi-sensory environment for play time that will help in his physical, cognitive, and social development. Multi-sensory play areas are hubs that help children develop a better grasp of a holistic early childhood development.

Be a good parent and let him play outside. Photo from mindfullivingnetwork.com

It’s a disturbing trend – more and more kids prefer to stay indoors to play video games or spend an unhealthy amount of time on the Internet. Those days when children would gladly do anything just to go outside for active play are almost gone.

Too much game time can be unhealthy. Melanie Holtzman via Flickr, Creative Commons